The Swedish file-sharing website "The Pirate Bay" is planning to buy its own nation in an attempt to circumvent international copyright laws.

This "micronation" called Sealand has a rather interesting history. It was founded on the principle that any group of people dissatisfied with the oppressive laws and restrictions of existing nation states may declare independence in any place not claimed to be under the jurisdiction of another sovereign entity. The location chosen was Roughs Tower, an island fortress created in World War II by Britain and subsequently abandoned to the jurisdiction of the High Seas. The independence of Sealand was upheld in a 1968 British court decision where the judge held that Roughs Tower stood in international waters and did not fall under the legal jurisdiction of the United Kingdom. This gave birth to Sealand's national motto of E Mare Libertas, or "From the Sea, Freedom".

The official language of Sealand is English and the Sealand Dollar has a fixed exchange rate of one U.S. dollar. Passports and stamps have been in circulation since 1969.

I don't know about you, but I'm not quite ready to start packing my bags just yet.

Probably very windy out there. In any case, as Wikipedia puts it, "Sealand's claims to sovereignty and legitimacy are not recognised by any country". So basically it isn't sovreign or legitimate.

It really doesn't matter what people want to claim as their right as long as the big powerful people of the world want something else. It's their world. We just rent a room in it.

If someone puts a web server out there that can potentially link up all kinds of obscure p2p activity, then all they have done is to place themselves on the one place where anybody can get to them and take them down with force without any possibility of protest or help from anyone. Bad move.